Networks, such as telecommunications, data, and the like, include a plurality of different network elements. A network element (NE) is hardware equipment that is addressable and manageable. NEs provide support or services to the user and can be managed through an element manager (EMS). A network (e.g., enterprise or service-provider) can include different NEs from a variety of different equipment vendors. An example of an NE is a multi-service switch (MSS) which includes multi-service interfaces, such as OC-48c/OC-12c/OC-3c ATM and packet-over SONET (POS), ATM interfaces, such as DS-3, E3, OC-3, DS-1, etc., frame relay/IP interfaces, such as OC-3, DS-3, etc., and Ethernet interfaces, such as 10/100 BaseT and gigabit Ethernet. Other examples of NEs include Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) switches, digital subscriber loop aggregation multiplexers (DSLAMs), optical add-drop multiplexers, and the like.
NEs include various components, such as ingress and egress ports, operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) components, and the like. Of note, OAM&P components can include a database which tracks all of the provisioned ports in the NE along with other NE provisioning data. This database includes data relating to all the circuits in the NE, such as circuit name, A-Z connection endpoints, logical port (Lport) identifier, and the like.
Networks often undergo maintenance and upgrades, such as, for example, decommissioning one NE and rolling the traffic to another NE. For example, the decommissioning can occur to remove an older NE of one vendor to roll the traffic to a newer NE from another vendor. The process of decommissioning one NE and rolling the traffic to another typically involves the steps of recreating the database in the new NE, and physically moving cables from the old NE to the new NE during a maintenance period.
Disadvantageously, the process of migrating a database from one NE to another vendor's NE requires intimate knowledge of both management database systems. Current methods of performing this service are a series of Structured Query Language (SQL) commands or scripts that export only the required data and import this into the secondary database system on the new NE to recreate the same level of configuration to allow physical cables to be moved from one NE to another and allow the end user to perform a fiber cutover to decommission one NE. SQL is a popular computer language used to create, retrieve, update and delete data from relational database management systems.
Several challenges exist with the current methods. For example, an NE could potentially have hundreds of thousands of circuits that require replication on the newly commissioned NE. It is difficult to verify that all NE data is gathered and that no circuit data is omitted or duplicated. This is important to avoid dropping a particular circuit during the decommissioning and traffic rolling. Additionally, aggregating multiple systems onto one NE can cause conflicts with circuit names, logical port (lport) identification, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)/Frame Relay (FR) identifiers, and the like. For example, new NEs typically include significant more circuit capacity than older NEs, and migration can include migrating several older NEs to a single new NE potentially causing data conflicts. Finally, different vendors can have different information in the database which could result in duplicate entries during a migration.
Thus, systems and methods for a database migration service are needed which overcome these limitations described herein.